On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:00:12 +0200, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I think it depends on which quarter you are looking at -- the last time I looked, it was in the 3rd quarter and they had a huge boost in income which they admitted came from the annual upgrade to Finale. I didn't notice any real comparison on an annual basis between the two programs. If what you say is true, then it is despicable that MakeMusic has reduced the number of developers for Finale and put them onto SmartMusic, and has made the decision that it is alright to ship buggy versions of Finale each June/July instead of putting more development dollars into their bread-and-butter products.
According to the 2007 Annual Report, the share of net revenue earned by SmartMusic rose from 17 to just under 20 percent from 2006 to 2007, while notation products declined from 79 to 75 percent. A casual reading the text of the document might well lead to the impression that SmartMusic is the sole product of the company, although the extent of the potential market and risk of downturns (or the introduction of competition) are uncertainties. Notation is described as a niche market, and Finale appears to be viewed as a mature product. Nevertheless, notation is the revenue stream from which the company extracts both profits and money to plough back into development. The report does not breakdown development expenses by product, but the breakdown given for capitalized software products strongly reinforces the "mature" characterization of the notation products (i.e. not a focus for development).
Daniel Wolf _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
